Cathy: So, I have a couple of different businesses. I think that if everything you teaches is in the same genre, so like, Reid teaches sex-positive. He teaches both people that want to learn for their own personal lives and he also teaches people that are professionals. So that’s all under on genre. He doesn’t have two different brands.

Reid: Yeah. If I also, you know, consulted on people’s dry-cleaning business.

Cathy: It’ll be separate.

Reid: Or I owned a business that was about, you know, storage units or something like that, it would be weird. Like, why is a sex educator also doing storage businesses?

Cathy: Yeah. So, the two – the professionals and the personal, they build and enhance each other’s credibility. And there’s a lot of people that go back and forth and that a lot of the same messages, similar messages in both of them. So, it makes sense to have that as one. For me I have Thriving Now which I’m a co-creator on, co-creator of that. We do emotional freedom and techniques we tap on acupressure points. And that I keep separated from The Intimacy Dojo, partly because we found that on Thriving Now, there a lot of people that were very uncomfortable with sexual ideas. And so, and there were also a lot of people that didn’t want to tap on those things. So, they’re two separate…we cross pollinate a lot but then two separate businesses because of the comfort and ease of accessibility for people.

Reid: Yeah. And you could think about having like one place like, you know, www.ReidMihalko.com…

Cathy: But nobody can spell it.

Reid: They can Google it at this point. It’s web 2.0. But maybe, that is the website that has just kind of lists all of my projects, all the things I do but I’m sending people to the places where they…that’s one, demographic. It’s designed and marketed towards those people that I’m trying to reach and solve those problems that I’m trying to solve. And that way, you’re trying to not confuse people and you’re making it easy for them to get the thing that they need rather than becoming like this “super store” with so many aisles and so many things that people get overwhelmed, especially when we’re dealing with sex and intimacy and relationships. People are already struggling with their shame. You know, they feel broken so you have to kind of help them and simplify the process in a way where they can take simple and powerful actions. Usually in baby step form rather than you know, I’m here because I’m wresting with my body and you know, issues of orgasm. Why are you…

Cathy: Trying to sell me tires.

Reid: Yeah. Like, I don’t get it. It’s not just congruent.

Cathy: One other thing that’s important if you’re starting out. Really creative people have a lot of ideas and there’s a tendency to start too many things at once and then you never build any one thing big. So Thriving Now existed for six years before I ever considered starting another sideline. It was built up, it had a good website, it had a big list, it was well-known. If you start too many things at once, none of them really get attraction and then you’ll just feel overwhelming of having that sense of success. So…

Reid: Yeah. And this is the thing like, this is a great example. Like, you might not have known that Cathy is actually known in the world of EFT. Now you know. But you came here for business advice and now you know, oh, there’s just other thing that Cathy does. I like Cathy. We’ll go check it out and maybe there will be something that’s useful for you or not.

Cathy: We have a bunch of work on self-sabotage but [inaudible 00:04:14] on business.

Reid: So, it’s not that you don’t ever have to you know, admit that you do other things but you know, if you’re a body worker or you know, a sex therapist and you have a rock and roll band, you know maybe, that’s not useful for the people that are trying to come to you for sexual empowerment to know that you’re playing at the local bar on Wednesday. So don’t have your rock and roll band website and your sex therapy website be on the same website. I hope that’s helpful.

Cathy: Yeah. Good luck! Let us know what you think. When where would you decide to have separate or combined businesses?